>> thank you. thank you. i have um... thank you and peace be with you. there's three mike's here so i

don't know if i should put this down. um... before i start, i've had the great honor to - i love to talk at schools. k through graduate school and one question i ask children in america is i ask them how many of you have talked great detail to your grandparents or elders or fore father's about world war ii or the depression or vietnam or civil rights movement, or perhaps if your parents or grandparents came from another country and settled here what it's like. only five to ten percent of the ands come up. if i asked that same question in afghanistan or pakistan or africa 90% of ands come up and i think the as great tragedy we've lost that oral tradition and a

rich tradition about folklore and heritage and faith and heritage. to honor that today i'd like to share with you a little story. it's a hard cover book that came out in march of 2006. anybody have a hard cover. wave it up here. you might not want it after i say this. i got to pick the title. three cups of tea but viking told me they would pick the subtitle and they picked one man mission to fight terrorism one school at a time. i objected because obviously there's- ways to fight tear riz m with education but i said i do this to promote peace and i started 8 years before 911 and this is about promoting peace through education. i've worked afghanistan and pakistan many years and i said we need to have a tribal

council. i went to manhattan in the fall of 2005 and the big boss of the whole group, nancy shepherd and carlin coburn in publicity. we met in a little room and i stated my case and they said, this is your first book so you need to listen to a few things here. first of all only 12 percent of nonfiction books make a profit and 2/3 are pre chosen by the publisher. we'd like to put our marketing arm behind us but your having to fight tear riz m to this. since i grew up in africa and worked pakistan for many years you never settle a deal without driving a hard bargain so i said if the hard cover doesn't do well, i'd like the subtitle changed later on for the paper

back. julia and our other board relently pounded away month after month. i was in pakistan of december of 2006 and there was a new editor on the book and they said they decided to change the title to one man's mission to promote peace. the hard cover didn't do that well. sold 20,000 copies. while the paper back came out on january 30th of this year and since out it's been on the new york times best seller selling over 700,000 copies now. and it's one man's mission to promote peace. and they're still baffleed manhattan because they're scratching their heads the first month because there's only - well no big city book editor did it so to be a best seller you need new york times or the

chronicle or boston globes to give you good book reviews. no national t.v. or, m pr so paul said what's going on out there. i said, you know this is what i think it's about book clubs and women's groups, synagogues, mosques and churches and an incredible amount of book clubs here in the bay view area and about people yearning for piece and looking for the answers of peace. any ways it's been really incredible and aspire together see people from all walks of life i really think can re late to promoting peace one child at a time. we got some news last month that the pentagon purchased 5,000 copies. let me finish it. and it's for counter intelligence training, 101 and

mandatory reading for they're course encounter intelligence. this is in tan sa any a. i went there when i was three years old and my father founded a medical center and my mother started a school. it was a wonderful childhood. i went to school with children from two dozen countries. with jews and christians and hindus and for me that was the way the world was. finally it came time to come back to america. i was in high school and really looking forward to coming back to a place whether i heard about fourth of jewels lies anulies . i got beat up. they said you're not from america. it wasn't in africa that i

learned about racism but here in united states. we were completely broke and i did something real unpopular at the time. four days after high school i joind the united states army. not only to serve my country but to get the,gi bill to continue my education. then i saw young men and women from all across america. from farms and ranches and it matedm made me realize the strength in this country is not from commonality but our great diversity. i had a younger sister named gift of god and christa was a special girl because she suffered from severe epilepsy. she never once complained.

she never said across word and it could or would take her an hour or two to line um... up her clothes and do our homework and get her lunch b bag ready. i'm the five minutes bed to - bus kind of guy, you know? well krista saw the baseball movie called field of dreams. very inspiring movie that takes place in the corn field in iowa and decided for her 23rd birthday she wanted to go see that place. she was living in minneapolis and packed her bags to go to the field of dreams. when my mother went to wake her up on july 24th 1992 she had died in her sleep from a massive seizure and it was devastating for all of us. i was climbing quite a bit and roaming around quite a bit and

every summer i would take a month and do something with her. every year we could go to disneyland and i took her to yosemite. it was very special to do that with my sister. at the time i was climbing a lot, i thought i'm going to pick a big bad mountain to climb in honor of krista. she had an amber necklace she got on the indian ocean coast and i was going to take that and put it on top of,k 2. when i went to,k 2 to climb a mountain and instead a found affair greater mountain to climb. here's the world's second highest mountain. you can put 84, monthe horns here to fill it up. i hope there's no outdoor retailers. two season family camping tents

from logan you at the this tenth is a french league on eres tenth designed for the sahara. this came from north face prototype tenth called the wind tunnel. it was 20 years old when we took it to,k 2. here's our mottly crew of 12 climbers. the gentleman in the white shirt left after one week after he found out there's no alcohol in pakistan. i don't tell you anymore where he's from, but this is - what is this doug? deadly. avalanche. we call this the mother of all avalanches a year after desert storm. intense from spain and you can see the guys running out in their underwear. fortunately nobody was killed in

this avalanche. this is the art memorial in honor of, art gillke. we climbed a lot at night and these for tops of pots and pans that have been carved out in the names of climbers that died on this mountain. we climbed at night and it's difficult because you can only see ten feet for front of you and 6,000s of feet below we heard plates clanging against the rocks and i thought really is this a good way to honor my sister. finally 78 days later it was time to go home. i was weak, exhausted and emaciated but most of all i felt that neck la l necklace and i ft her down. anybody that read the book can you remember what the first chapter is called.

it starts with an,f, failure. that's another thing they really objected to in manhattan. said you can't start a book with the word failure. at least i won that argument. i said you know, our success is originally based in failure and you know what? all of us make mistakes and all of us sometimes fail. sometimes with relationships or investments or fail with jobs. um... i flunked my first driving test when i was 16 and totald the car while parallel parking and some student wills not get into college. really when you fail it's not the end of the road. it's more of an opportunity and away to find a different path. when i come to those moments in life, i think of the perz yen proverb that says when it's dark you can see the star.

for those of you that have been there, i failed get a really good sunset picture on,k 2. this is actually a volcano in mexico but i love this climbing photo to end the climing sequence. so, here's our dirt bag climbers. done with the climb and it's time for me to head back to berkley. i was very weak and fortunately, we were still alive. that year five of 12 climbers that ascending died during the descend. i had to walk five days back to the nearest village to catch a jeep back to civilization. as i got to the village a string of kids started grabbing on to me and as i got near there was a stout, gruff man with a silver grin and he looked at me and he

said peace be with you and then he looked at me and shook his a had had and said chiz l.a. i'm from the midwest and the best translation is what the heck. i was skruf if i and looked pretty bad and he said, son, i'd like you to come to our village but first, you need to take a bath. so, i went down to the river, very filthy, a washed up and we went for tea. in that sorry lame i learned many things. one out of three children there dies before the age of one. usually dehydration or diarrhea induced dehydration. many young men have left the villages to try and get jobs as dishwashers in the cities or work on construction crews or work for foreign climbers and they often have to pull they're

resources and sell they're goats and land to bribe somebody. for who is left behind is the women and they say now they're workload has doubled over the last two decades. i walked into this stli ladies and gentle village and we had yet to have three cup office tea with each other. first cup your a stranger, second cup a friend, and third cup you become family but the process take many years. here in american we have two minutes football drills and 6 second sound bites and 30 minutes power lunches and really it's about three cups of tea and really it's about relationships. i asked about a school and i know thisd the kids disappeared and i asked about school and they were very embarrassed and finally took me behind the village and i saw 84 children

sitting in the dirt during school lessons. five girls and 79 boys and writing with sticks in the sand. i've seen a lot of poverty in africa but when i saw those kids and a young girl came up to me and - it was a cold autumn day and he or she said will you help us build a school and i made a very rash promise and promised to build a school. i was very broke and had to raise 12 thousand dollars and i didn't have a clue how to raise money like that. so i went to the local library. any librarians here. there's one. let's all give them a big and. [applause] so i went to the library, the resource librarian and talked to her and we looked up the name of 580 celebrities

and movie stars and i didn't know how to use a computer so i and typed 580 letters. dear michael jordan, dear sylvester stallone. guess what happened? nothing. then at christmas time i got one check for $100 from tom brokaw and then i saw my climbing ger and i sold it and i sold my car for $500 that i got from my grandfather in a seedy area in oakland. by string i o spring i had only $2,400. my mother invited me to come and talk to the kids. when i got ready to leave, a fourth grader named jeffery looked me in the aye and he said i've got a piggy bank at

home and i'm going to help you build that school. west side school raised 65, 300 pennies. it wasn't the celebrities or the sports heroes or movie stars or if i lan throw pears but children reaching out to children half way around the world to help them build a school. what can you buy with a penny the bay area? probably nothing. in montana you can buy 1/2 tootsie roll. but in afghanistan you can buy a pencil. it's not that's so important but education gives a child hope. you know, if you fight tear riz her rorism it's based in fear but the real enemy is ignorance that

bleeds hatred. here in america, afghanistan, africa or pakistan. the way to overcome that i think is through education and also with having courage and compassion. instead of building walls we need to build peace and have the courage to do that. so i went back to pakistan in 94 and brought the school supplies and finally got to the village and the man was again there to greet me. he shook his head and said, chizle what the heck. not only had i come back, he said you've made two big mistakes. we don't start building before wintertime and if you really want to build school we're going to have to build a bridge first and i hadn't really thought about that. so i came back to america and

raised 10,000 more dollars. and then i got back from tack stan and bridge got built and no school yet. i was 38 years old, die hard bachelor and all i could think was getting that school built. i went to a fund raise er the fair month in san francisco where my hero was speaking. it was getting late and people were nodding off and he was going on and on about the queens coronation so i went to the back to get some fresh air and there was a beautiful woman in the back wearing a dress and black combat books and her name was, tara bishop and six months later got married and now we're living happily ever after in montana. [applause] i also a guy name

keesh ran a company called laser image and he taught me how to use a computer and tara after watching me for several days one day, i was writing the fund raising letters and i learned on the computer but she said let me show you something. it's called cut and paste. so, with her now we could write hundreds of fund raising letters and in pakistan i learned to use a local laptop. slate board there. the whole village participated in the building school and it was a joy ous time. this is 18 miles - on that bridge - i didn't mention it but there's 5, 800 pound cables they carried up to the village. 8 men would put this with a

spool and carry this up to the village. this is where they're carrying the struts and beams for the roof. what's amazing here, this man is the head man for the village. i don't know if there's clergy here, but in their culture they're not supposed to do labor. they're suppose to give spiritual advice. he carried the first load symbolizing his advocacy for education. in the back there's the silver beard. see after three years we hadn't gotten very far. the problem wasn't them but me. i was doing something we call micromanage meant. i had my receipts and i was determined to make this school getting built without losing one dollar and village chief one day

came up to me and sat me down and said son, you need to do one thing, you need to sit down and be quiet and let us do the work and he took my receipts and records and locked them in an earthen locker and he came back with his british musket gun, when you fire it it blasts in your face and he came back and said everything will be fine. a l.a. willing. six weeks later the school got built. it was an important lesson to let go and let the communities be empowered and let them do they're work in entirety. it came time to open the school and kids came from all around and julia came all the way here from america. you could see this colorful lapel around they're neck that

means bam! of courage. it's put around a newborn when they're first born to ward away evil spirits, so the kids put that around they're neck. julie you want to model this? this is a, tomar. it means badge of courage. look at this gentlemen on the right. he has orange haier. not because he died it but because he has a disease where he's starving from protein deficiency. see the joy despite the lack of these things. it came in 96 i decided to dedicate my life to promoting literacy and building schools in that part of the world and i've gotten married and had a baby on the way, and if you want to read the book there's an 8 day

kidnapping and many things happened but another thing that happened in 96, i had my first fatawa issued against me. this is not just a death decree but it can prohibit women from going shopping or it can mean you can't watch television. in my case. it was banishing me from the country because i was helping put girls in school. i sought the advise of the head shiite in north pakistan. before you pass judgement on him, he's the good guy. very noble compassionate visionary man and he said, well let me find out and he wrote a letter to the counsel to seek clarification as to what to do with this crazy american in their midst trying put girls in

school. i was summond to the intersank tum of the inner mosque. it was intimidating. there was 8 of them with their black turf bonns on anbens and a box. and in that was a letter in the persian script and said dear compassion of the poor we reviewed your case and in koran education is inor encouraged for all children. it encourages all people to have knowledge and seek knowledge. well, um... with that letter, started getting dozens of proposals especially for girls schools. why is girls education so important? i've gone to the extent now

where i say you can drop bombs and build roads or put in electricity but until the girls are implicated, society won't change. several global studies show if you educate a girl to fifth grade level it does three things. reduce infant mortality, population explosion reduction and improve the quality of life and health. if your interested you can look up a guy called, well he wrote a book called development is freedom. it's a fat book. in the 60's another writer had the very foresite to see that girls education would be a process to bring about stabilization of population. he wrote a book called the poverty curve and jeffery sacks wrote the end of